Guitarist Henry Kaiser has never been short on ideas. His musical
musings have taken him from free improv to Grateful Dead cover band;
guitar duets with Fred Frith and Derek Bailey to collaborations with
musicians from Madagascar So It wasn't a huge leap when,
in 1998, he decided to form a project with other Bay Area musicians
to explore the mid-70s electric music of Miles Davis. What could have
been merely an interesting footnote or tribute jam band became much
more due to his inspired choice of Wadada Leo Smith to fill the trumpet
chair.

While Smith conjures up Miles' sound, he does so in a deeply
personal manner, infused with an individual sense of compositional
and improvisational form. Like Davis, Smith knows about building forms
out of small kernels and the careful placement of notes. Their debut
release on Shanachie let a core group and a passel of guests loose
on Big Fun / Jack Johnson era Miles compositions for
a series of simmering jams. This time out, Kaiser and Smith have recruited
jazz luminaries Greg Osby and John Tchicai on reeds, along with a
group of musicians with flawless studio chops and a penchant for jam-band
groove (guitarists Chris Muir and Mike Keneally, bassist Michael Manring,
Tom Coster on keyboards, Steve Smith on drums, and Karl Perazzo on
percussion).

This two-CD release starts from the same basic idea as their debut,
but takes a bit of a different tact. Rather than sticking almost exclusively
to Davis pieces, of the 11 cuts, four are by Smith, and one is a collective
improvisation. Also missing is the ensemble mix-and-match of the first
CD. Instead, Smith and Kaiser reside over the core group with guests
Rova Sax Quartet, tabla player Zakir Hussain, and guitarist Dave Creamer
weighing in on one or two pieces each.

Over the course of the two CDs, the music becomes a bit sprawling
at times, but there are a number of standouts. "Jabali, Pt. 1"
and "Jabali, Pt. 2" capture the churning funk of the Davis
groups the best, with Smith's stabbing trumpet cutting through
the layered groove. Smith's "Shinjuku" gets to the
essence of Davis' music and sparks the group into some particularly
heated playing. "Great Expectations" is a feature for Hussain,
and his tablas drive the improvisations. Though they ramble at times,
features for both reed players are also worth noting. But it is the
starting and closing spare duets, with Smith's trumpet placed
against the rolling patterns of the tuned drums that are particularly
striking.

The biggest quibble with this band though, is that they have flattened
out the seething intensity and roiling layers of Davis' groups.
The long pieces often devolve into loose-limbed polish and spacey
jams that wend their way over the insistent vamps. Missing are the
constantly morphing flayed striations that Miles goaded his band with.
That said, this is still worth checking out, particularly for Smith's
striking voice and the chance to hear Osby and Tchicai run the voodoo
down.